Stay Kula
A lifestyle serviced apartment brand scaling across several countries, with a booking journey that was steadily handing its best guests to third parties.
The context
Kula expanded quickly across multiple countries and asked us to take the whole digital experience: the web app, Google Ads, paid social, SEO, email, and the strategic support that ties them together.
What was disconnected
Rates lived in Mews. The website had its own idea of availability. Guest profiles were spread across booking channels, and the brand had limited visibility of who its returning guests actually were — which meant the marketing was buying audiences it already owned.
What we changed
We built a bespoke web platform integrated directly with Mews, so real-time availability and rate feeds come from the system of record rather than a copy of it.
Then the Kula Club: a membership platform with custom authentication through Google Firebase, giving members preferential rates drawn live from Mews. It is a channel-shift mechanism and a first-party data strategy in the same feature — the guest gets a better rate, the business gets the relationship.
Google Ads, SEO and email were managed against that model rather than against generic traffic goals.
Which disciplines were involved
Experience and Labs built the platform and the integrations. Growth ran the acquisition against them.
What improved
Kula now controls its own guest profiles, which makes the marketing measurably more effective, reduces reliance on third-party agents, and gives the brand a booking experience that improves the more someone uses it.
What the work taught
A membership scheme is only a discount until it is wired into the PMS. Once it is, it becomes the mechanism by which a business stops renting its guest relationships.
